French Speaker Series: Eva Doumbia
Eva Doumbia will speak about her work as a writer, director, and actress, as well as her current play Autophagies.
Written and directed by Doumbia, Autophagies initially premiered in French at the Festival d’Avignon in July 2021 to an audience thrilled by the mélange of “traditional disciplines joined by another, widely popular one: cooking. Alongside a busy chef-actor, the performers, including a musician, a dancer-actress, and a mistress of ceremony, lead us to a place somewhere between Africa and Europe, where all the ingredients come together for a great celebration of the senses. Doumbia thinks of the show as a ‘documentary Eucharist’ and also encourages us to think about the political dimension of food. Reflecting with humor and tenderness on their origins and modes of culture, foodstuffs, here given a voice, she challenges common preconceptions to change what we think of as having ‘always been,’ or ‘established fact.’"